<i>Photo</i> - Review

A good combination of love and thriller
Siva Nageswara Rao, who had 14 films to his credit as director, is well-known among the Telugu audiences with his debut film Money. His film with Akhil, son of Nagarjuna, Sisindri also a memorable flick. In between, he did a film Pattukondi Chooddam. As most of his films have a comedy thread, the producers are after him only for a comedy subject. But, the director wanted to prove his versatility by doing a thriller and he did not want to experiment with some other producer and he himself started his own banner and produced it. The entire film was weaved like a fabric with different colours and it has comedy, thriller, love and college backdrops.

As for the story, Siddhu (Anand) has a passion for photography. He returns from the US and Bhanu (Mukta) is his girl friend. They love each other. Three of Siddhu's friends die under mysterious circumstances. Fear keeps haunting Siddhu and Bhanu as they dashed a girl with their car. One day Bhanu finds the photograph of Swapna (Anjali) in their college laboratory and the same girl is also posed with Siddhu in a photograph. When Bhanu asks Siddhu, he reveals that during his college days, he befriended with her and there is nothing like love between them. Later, Bhanu finds a photograph, where Sidhu and Swapna are in a compromising position. In the climax, a common friend of Sidhu and Swapna reveals the real secret behind the Photo in which Sidhu and Swapna were there. In fact, Siddhu's friends rape Swapna and implicate Siddhu. They take a photograph through which they started blackmailing him. As the truth revealed, the ghost stops haunting Sidhu and the film ends on a happy note.

Plus:
Hero Anand is a trained artiste. One of the heroines Anjali is a Telugu girl and hails from Bhimavaram and is in modelling in Chennai, while Mukta is a girl from Kerala and faced the camera for a Malayalam film. The performance of all the three is a plus point for the film. Sivanageswara Rao had kept a lot of effort in giving a spellbinding screenplay for the film. Though he lost grip here and there, it picked up a little while after the interval bang and continued till the climax. He was able to maintain good suspense was all through the film. Rohit Raj's music in re-recording is yet another plus point, while cinematography by KG Soman is the highlight of the film.

Minus:
Sivanageswara Rao, though wanted to change his track from comedy to thriller, he could not stop his urge in putting comedy in the film. The comedy scenes between Brahmanandam, Venumadhav and Suman Shetty, and another comedy track with Raghubabu, Benarjee, GV and others have nothing to do with the subject. To some extent they diluted the tempo of the film. Likewise, Gouthamraju who had a vast experience in editing should have used his scissors to further sharpen the film by reducing some unnecessary scenes here and there. The director also forgot to establish the love between Anand and Mukta properly. Even the killing of the three friends were also not properly established, though the hand of ghost was said to be behind the reason for their death.

Comment:
We can recommend every one to watch the film for its excellent and gripping screenplay and suspense. However, the commercial success of the film is in limbo and it could be possible through the mouth-talk publicity rather than promos and other such publicity blitzkrieg. As a whole the film is quite interesting as the film was said to have done based on some real life incidents that occurred in coastal Andhra and in Nizam areas. Moreover, the director was able to prove that love is not just a word, but it is a sentence and sometimes it could be a life sentence too.

Cast:
Anand, Mukta, Anjali, Jayasudha, Suman Setty, Tanikella Bharani, Nutan Prasad, Brahmanandam, Venumadhav, Dharmavarapu Subrahmanyam, Ali, LB Sriram, Krishna Bhagawan, MS Narayana, Kondavalasa Lakshmana Rao, Jeeva and others.

Credits:
Cinematography - KG Soman.
Editing - Gouthamraju.
Music - Rohit Raj.
Action - K Nandu.
Story and dialogues - Karlapalem Hanumantha Rao.
Presents - Nagesh Pawar in association with MGK Multimedia.
Screenplay, direction, producer - Sivanageswara Rao.
Banner - Siva Chithra.
Released on - September 01, 2006.